The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-08-11

vsntedi We have many marvellous ma
chimes that seem almost TO possess an
intelligence Of their own, % certainly
and accurately do they perform their
work but nobody believes that the ase
Of invention has more. than lust begun
upon the earth. How can we set limits,
then, to the progress the Martians may
have made In this respect II we once
grant that they possess the accumulated
experience Of ages which for US lies yet
far in the futuref One might almost
expect, If he could visit Mars, to find ito
Inhabitants served by very Franken.
stems Of ingenious mechanism.
The secrets of the Martian poles can
hardly have remained unpenetrated II its
Inhabitants can navigate the air, and 90
there are very great variations in the
temperature Of the seasons of Mars, they
may, by the same means, be able, like the
birds, to migrate to more congenial
climes when the weather grows disa.
greeable. In short, there is hardly any
possible attainment Of human invention
and progress which we may not safely
ascribe to the inhabitants Of the planet
Mars If they. really are, as has been
assumed, an older race than the descend
ants of Adam, and possessed Of equal in.
genuity.
1t must not be thought that all such
speculations are quite as idle as they
seem, for as we saw at the beginning Of
this article there exist numerous reasons
for regarding Mars as q world, in many
respects closely resembling the earth.
We must not, however, disguise the fact
that 1t possesses also many points of
wide divergence from the earth. 1t gets,
upon the whole, less than half as much
light and heat from the sun as the earth
gets, and its atmosphere is probably less
dense than ours, while the seasons are
very inequitable. Yet all these things
would not render 1t uninhabitable, for
there is almost no limit to the adaptive
capabilities of nature, and so we may,
with q high degree of probability, draw
from the presence of air and water upon
Mars the inference that life also exists
there. Every step beyond that mere in
ference Is, Of course, purely fanciful,
but so long as we do not lose
sight Of that fact, we can give
rein to the Imagination, and console
ourselves with the thought that our fam
cies about the Martians are at least as
reasonable as those of Swedenborg, who,
as If he had had in mind the advantages
, that q race may derive from ages of de-
vel0pment, declared that "the spirits OF
Mars are amongst the best of all spirits,
who come from the earths of this solar
system, being for the most part celestial
men, not unlike those who were of the
most ancient church on this earth. y =
The speech of the inhabitants of Mars
was different from that of the inhabit-
ants of our earth, in that it was not
sonorous, but almost tacit, insinuating
itself into the interior or hearing and
sight by shorter way, and consequently
It was more perfect, fuller of ideas, and
thereby approaching nearer to the speech
Of spirits and angels"
That sort of speech would be worth
striving many centuries to obtain, and If
the Martians have got it they must be
congratulated upon its possession more
heartily than upon all their other sup
posed advantages.
GARRETT p. SERvIss.